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Sky Monster
Sky Monster is a New Zealand Air Force pilot and a member of the Coalition of Minnows team, primarily operating as their pilot for the Halicarnassus and Sky Warrior. History Early History At some point after turning 18, the man known only as Sky Monster joined the New Zealand Air Force, where he earned his call-sign. Through his adult life, Sky Monster's parents were constantly on his back to provide them with grandchildren. In 1996, Sky Monster was among New Zealand's representatives in a meeting of small nations to discuss uniting to restore the Golden Capstone in order to avert the destruction threatened by the Tartarus sunspot. Soon the pilot was chosen as his country's representative to help guard Lily until she was old enough to begin translating the clues leading to the hiding places within the seven Ancient Wonders. Over the next several years spent raising Lily at the team's base in Kenya, Sky Monster took to looking after the plane that Jack West Jr has taken from Saddam Heussein, the Halicarnassus. At some point he began working with Wizard to develop a Retrograde Thrust System to allow it to hover in the air vertically. Sky Monster and Lily enjoyed reading the Lord of the Rings novels together, and after they watched the film adaptions together, he gave Lily her own call-sign; Eowyn. As the team members became closer, Jack suggested that Sky Monster and the others write a letter or email to be read by him should something happen and they die, which they all agreed to do. When Lily turned ten, she managed to decipher the first part of the Callimachus text, and soon afterwards Jack led Sky Monster and the rest of the team to the Sudan to locate the Colossus of Rhodes Piece. Seven Ancient Wonders Being that he had little-to-no experience in ground combat, Sky Monster remained in the Halicarnassus while the team entered the ancient mine. After they were forced to abandon the Piece to Cal Kallis's CIEF team, Jack called Sky Monster to request that he extract them and their swamp-runners in the Hali. After the team determined the Alexandria Lighthouse Piece was located at Hamilcar's Refuge, Sky Monster dropped them off on the Tunisia coast while they made their play for the Piece against the CIEF. A day after he picked up the team following the failed mission, Sky Monster piloted the Halicarnassus to pick up Jack from an Italian resort island. In the wake of their failures, Jack called a team meeting, during which Sky Monster left the plane on auto-pilot. During the discussion regarding the final resting place of the Temple of Artemis Piece with the Cult of Amun Ra, Sky Monster spoke up to note that he was under the impression that the Cult had long since died out, to which Wizard informed him that the Cult of Amun Ra was now the Catholic Church. Once Jack reluctantly decided they needed to liberate Mustapha Zaeed, an expert on the Capstone, from Guantanamo Bay to help, Sky Monster piloted the Hali while other members of the team took control of the plane's turrets. He managed to make a landing on the base's golf course with ease, having earlier teased Jack to give him a harder challenge. With Zaeed's assistance, the team were able to determine the locations of the next two Pieces, and soon afterwards Sky Monster dropped off the divided team to Paris and Frankfurt so that they could retrieve the next Pieces. Once Jack's team retrieved the Zeus Piece, Sky Monster picked them up and escaped to Spain. Later, after they had landed back at Victoria Station, Sky Monster was in the middle of doing a post-flight check when they suddenly came under fire from the Judah's men. Sky Monster was quickly able to get the Halicarnassus up and running in time to allow most of them to escape. When taking the team to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Iraq, Sky Monster heard radio chatter of approaching CIEF forces and warned Jack. Following the disastrous mission in which only Jack and Pooh Bear made it back, Sky Monster picked them up, and was subjected to watch as Jack checked them all for tracking bugs and Jack himself failed. Next, Sky Monster and Pooh Bear attacked the CIEF forces gathered at the Great Pyramid in order to prevent them from attaining global power. Initiating the Halicarnassus's vertical hovering ability, Sky Monster was more freely able to assist in the assault by firing missiles at the enemy choppers. When the battle was over, Sky Monster took the team away from the area. In the following weeks after the battle, Sky Monster assisted Jack in retrieving the Pillar from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and Mirror from the Lighthouse of Alexandria from Hamilcar's refuge, and transported them to the nearest airfield to Jack's new farm in Australia. Between Seven Ancient Wonders and The Six Sacred Stones Some time after the mission was completed, Sky Monster returned to New Zealand to resume his regular duties, while occasionally being asked to go over some details of the Capstone mission. During his time off, he would regularly visit Jack and Lily at the Great-Sandy Desert Farm. Though the absence of most of her former guardians, including Sky Monster, was hard on Lily at first, she in turn took to visiting of then in their home nation whenever possible. Sky Monster was able to rejoin the entire team as they celebrated the 2007 New Year at the Burj al Arab in Dubai. On one occasion while staying with Jack, Sky Monster accompanied his friend to Pine Gap, where he scoffed at the fact that the Australian military claimed it housed giant underground antennas. Some time shortly before the first of December 2007, Sky Monster was visiting Jack's farm to visit him and Lily during her school break. The Six Sacred Stones Sky Monster was awoken by Jack as he called to his guests that the farm was about to be attacked by invading Chinese forces, and rushed off alone to get the Halicarnassus ready for everyone to flee. Meeting Jack and Zoe's LSV's on the highway, he extracted them and began a fire fight with Chinese MiGs, which they managed to repel or destroy. Jack then instructed Sky Monster to fly them on a non-direct route to Dubai, where Wizard had requested Jack arrange a new meeting of nations. Once everyone had gathered, Sky Monster represented New Zealand once again as Jack revealed what he had learned from Wizard's notes; a zero-point field referred to as the Dark Star was due to enter the solar system, and unless it was repelled, then its deadly energy would destroy all life on Earth. To this end, they needed to gather six oblong diamonds called Pillars and set them at various locations around the world to rebuild an ancient machine. In order to find the Pillars and Vertices, determine when each Pillar had to be set and cleanse them, they would need to find the Six Sacred Stones. In need of Wizard's greater knowledge of the situation, Sky Monster transported most of the team to China so that they could free Wizard and Tank from the Chinese, and waited for them at a different rendezvous point as they performed the break-out of Xintan and retrieved the Philosopher's Stone from Witch Mountain. Once their tasks were completed, Sky Monster picked up the team and began flying them to Mortimer Island, where they were to go over the information they had learned. Sky Monster joined the rest of the procession as they identified the location of the First Vertex at Abu Simbel, learned the Pillar-laying dates from the Killing Stone of the Maya, and cleansed the two Pillars they had with the Philosopher's Stone. Once they were ready, Sky Monster took control of the Halicarnassus to transport the team to Abu Simbel to lay the Pillar at its Vertex. However, while the team were busy, Sky Monster and Stretch learned of an invading force heading for the team, and after they eventually made contact to warn them, he dropped Stretch off so that they could rendezvous at the highway. When Wizard's car arrived, pursued by the enemy forces, one of the Hali's engines was damaged by an RPG and troops prepared to invade. An angered Sky Monster left Wizard to steer them towards a stretch of highway they could still take off from while he went after the troops with a shotgun. Unaware his radio ear-piece had come loose, Jack saved him from an ambush, and told Sky Monster to leave everyone else behind if it meant getting Wizard, Lily and the Pillar away. With the last stretch of highway looming, Sky Monster was forced to leave Jack, Stretch, Pooh Bear and Astro behind as they headed for the Congo. However, with the damage the Halicarnassus had taken and lacking the necessary fuel, Sky Monster had to join Wizard's team as they left the Halicarnassus on an abandoned airstrip and began driving through Rwanda to rendezvous with Solomon Kol. After meeting up with the Kenyan, Sky Monster and Solomon's friends began making their way back to the Hali with the fuel they needed to get to Victoria Station. Once they arrived, Sky Monster spent the next few days attaching a new engine he'd kept at the farm to the Hali before he headed off to the Congo, listening for any radio chatter about the team. After following an aerial contingent at a distance, Sky Monster soon spotted a Clipper flying out of the area, and upon making contact with it discovered that Wizard, Zoe and Lily were in it and in need of an escape. Utilising a dog-sniffer maneuver, Sky Monster quickly extracted everyone onto the Halicarnassus before the natives within the Clipper brought the small plane down While trying to come up with a plan to get to the second Vertex under Table Mountain, Sky Monster discovered that all traffic into South Africa was blocked, and they were thus unable to reach the Vertex. While resting at an airfield, the team was contacted by Jack, and Sky Monster and the others watched Jack make his way through the Vertex via a video feed, and his subsequent fall into the chasm. Though as shocked as everyone else, Sky Monster noted that Jack had managed to lay the Pillar, but then had to prepare the Halicarnassus for take-off as enemy F-15's approached their position. The Five Greatest Warriors Sky Monster flew the Halicarnassus out over the sea to force their pursuers to abandon the chase, and once the F-15's turned away Sky Monster received a message from Jack, who had survived the fall and rescued Alby. Sharing the others' relief, Sky Monster then followed Jack's instruction for them to rendezvous with him at World's End. After Jack decided they needed to help Pooh Bear rescue Stretch, Sky Monster waited with the Halicarnassus on edge of the Jordan-Israel border while Jack and Zoe infiltrated the Dimona Nuclear Research Centre. As Jack used another of Hussein's planes to fool Muniz into thinking he had eliminated them, Zoe drove Pooh Bear and Stretch to Sky Monster's position. After Jack contacted them to request a pickup from his original landing position, Sky Monster teased his friend and suggested they stick to his original rendezvous point. Once the whole team was reunited at Sea Ranger's base in Zanzibar to prepare their next move, Diane Cassidy suggested they focus their research on a prophecy in which five figures throughout history known as the Five Greatest Warriors would affect the Machine, the Pillars and the Vertices. As Cassidy explained, Moses, Jesus Christ, Genghis Khan and Napoléon Bonaparte all fit the descriptions in the prophecy, while the Fifth Warrior was unknown and set to be present during the Dark Star's return. Cassidy's suggestion turned out to be quite fruitful, and Sky Monster and the rest of the team spent the next two months undergoing research to confirm the Five Warriors' connections to the Machine. When Lachlan and Julius Adamson discovered that Genghis once possessed a Fabergé Egg with images of the entrances to the Vertices, kept in his long lost Arsenal, Sky Monster flew Jack, Wizard, Zoe and Lily to Mongolia in order to locate it. Having to land some distance away, Sky Monster joined the group as they traveled over-land towards where they believed the Arsenal was, and Zoe was amused by the pilot's discomfort as she drove. When they arrived at the concealed meteor crater containing the Arsenal, it became clear that their enemies had already entered the Arsenal, and so Jack had Sky Monster remain up top with the Chinese vehicles to act as their lookout. When the rest of the Chinese forces arrived, Sky Monster hid beneath one of the abandoned vehicles until Wolf emerged and ordered Mao Gongli to destroy the Arsenal with the team inside it. Sneaking into the entrance, Sky Monster cut the suspension bridge and radioed Jack to warn him of the danger, and soon Jack sent him to help Zoe dig out an old escape tunnel beneath Genghis's sarcophagus to avoid Mao and his forces. After they had laid low for a week, Sky Monster took Jack, Lily and Zoe to an abandoned airfield so that they could monitor the situation around the third Vertex at Hokkaido, and soon informed Jack of a call from Pooh Bear's team in England. Since the captive Tank had revealed that the Blood Brotherhood was supported by the Japanese government and had blockaded the Vertex, Jack opted to use the Black Bee to move in and assist Wolf's forces with Lily and Zoe, while Sky Monster was to remain with Tank. Though he lost contact with Jack while his team were in the Vertex, Sky Monster realised the Pillar must have been successfully placed when the time to do so had passed, and contacted Pooh Bear's team to let them know. Soon afterwards, however, Sky Monster was captured by Russian forces, along with Tank and the Hali and taken to a dam in Siberia belonging to the Russian royal known as Carnivore, who had also captured Jack, Lily, Zoe and several other players in the Machine-restoration mission. Soon Carnivore revealed his intention to take the Pillars and their rewards and manipulate everyone else into completing the Machine's restoration for him. To free the hostages from the tank of formaldehyde, Sky Monster was sent with Jack and Lily to Diego Garcia to lay the fifth Pillar there on Carnivore's behalf. Upon landing, Sky Monster remained on the Halicarnassus with the two guards Carnviore had sent to watch them while Jack and Lily went with Iolanthe Compton-Jones to lay the Pillar. Predictably, the Americans turned on them as soon as the Pillar was laid, and Sky Monster rushed to get the Hali airborne before damaging the base's runways to keep enemy fighters from taking off. As he dodged the anti-aircraft fire, Sky Monster arranged with Jack to pick him, Lily and Iolanthe via a parachute hook before fleeing the area. Once Jack decided they needed to recover the final Pillar before their enemies, Sky Monster piloted the Hali to the Dead Sea and remained onboard with Carnivore's guards once again as Jack, Lily and Iolanthe entered the abandoned salt mine containing Jesus's tomb. Soon, Pooh Bear's team arrived and helped to disable the guards, and Pooh Bear and Stretch left Sky Monster, the twins and Cieran Kincaid with the Hali. Unfortunately Kincaid, in fact an agent of Carnivore, knocked Sky Monster out with a nerve agent and drugged Julius and Lachlan. After Jack and the others emerged from the mine, they saw that Carnivore had arrived at their position and Sky Monster and the twins had been handcuffed to the Hali's cargo ramp struts. Though Carnivore and his people managed to get away with Lily and the final Pillar, Jack managed to keep his friends from being executed by Kincaid by killing the treaherous Irishman first. When Sky Monster regained consciousness, the nerve agent Kincaid had used on him left the pilot very ill and vomiting. Once Jack had patched up the team as best he could, he opted to head to the final Vertex on Easter Island by himself. Sky Monster watched with the others as Jack took flight on the damaged Halicarnassus, and was saddened to know that the Hali was unlikely to have a safe landing and would never see the plane again. Sky Monster and the others began making their way back to civilisation, and then proceeded to to Carnivore's base to release the captives from the Living Tombs. After helping them recover overt the next few days, they were joined by Jack and Lily, and when he got a moment Sky Monster asked Jack about the Halicarnassus. After hearing about its fall into the Vertex's abyss, Jack suggested that Sky Monster could help him in getting themselves a replacement plane. A few weeks later, Sky Monster helped Jack break into the hanger on Easter Island where Carnivore's abandoned Tupolev-144 had been left, and flew it to Jack's new farm. Later Sky Monster was present to watch as Jack and Zoe got married in a small civil ceremony. Five weeks after the Dark Star's return, Sky Monster was staying at the farm and working on the newly-christened Sky Warrior. Between The Five Greatest Warriors and The Four Legendary Kingdoms During the course of the next eight years, the members of the Coalition team continued largely as they had before, returning to their home nation while making the odd visit to one another, and Sky Monster continued his regular visits to Jack's farm to work on the Sky Warrior. In November 2016, while he was at the West farm, Sky Monster piloted Jack, Lily, Alby and the dogs to Pine Gap where Jack's presence had been requested. However, while remaining on the Sky Warrior to tinker around as Jack was being briefed, Sky Monster was knocked out by a sleeping gas and summarily taken away, along with Jack, Lily, Alby and the dogs by a group of people led by Iolanthe. The Four Legendary Kingdoms Sky Monster would wake up two days later inside a train-mounted cage, and forced to watch as a mysterious man calling himself Hades announced the beginning of the Great Games of the Hydra in the Underworld, and as Jack struggled through a pit of rising water in order to obtain a strange gold sphere. Shortly after Jack was reunited with his friends in the interim before the next Challenge, Sky Monster and the others were met by Iolanthe, who explained to the group about the Four Legendary Kingdoms of Land, Sky, Sea and Underworld which secretly ruled the world from the shadows. Iolanthe also explained that the Games were a ritual to prevent the Hydra Galaxy from destroying the Earth, in a trial set by the Super-Ancient Beings, with Jack chosen as the Kingdom of Land's last-moment replacement Champion. After Vacheron told Jack to select one of his allies to accompany him during the next Challenge, the Australian choose Sky Monster and after being handcuffed together they were brought to the starting point for the Third Challenge. Unfortunately, they were faced with an army of minotaurs and armoured elephants, and Sky Monster's lack of fitness slowed them down as they struggled to survive. Sky Monster became fearful of falling victim to the minotaurs after watching Gregory Brigham and the Gorkha cut their companions' arms off and sacrificed them to further their chances, though Jack assured his friend he wasn't going to do that to him. When it became apparent that Jack wouldn't make it while still handcuffed to him, Sky Monster managed to get their handcuffs cut of by one of the rolling iron balls, but was hit by one of its spikes in his forearm. Sky Monster implored Jack to reach the finish line and survive without him, insisting that he was just a pilot and not as special as Jack himself. After Jack managed to defeat the Gorkha, ensuring that he wouldn't be eliminated, he went back to help Sky Monster, retrieving him before a river of sludge of overcome the pilot. After Jack rescued one of the minotaurs, they and Sky Monster exited the arena. After the Challenge, Sky Monster ate with his companions and their new ally E-147, and the next morning he watched from the hostage train and Jack, Alby and Roxy tackled the wall maze of the Fourth Challenge. After Jack was instructed to select two of his people to aid in in the Fifth Challenge, he chose Sky Monster (whose arm had been bandaged since the Third Challenge) and E-147 to join him in his Light Strike Vehicle, with Sky Monster in the driver's seat. Sky Monster drove hard to ensure that Fear's attempts to crash them failed, though Jack soon told Sky Monster to go on without him as he took down Fear. Knowing that he wouldn't live long if Jack died, the pilot went back for his friend, helping shrug off the various attempts by the minotaurs and the Hydra to stop them until Jack got the Sphere off Brigham. As Jack had learned that the hostages were all going to be kill after the Challenge, he had Sky Monster drive a Typhoon to the finish, and once they had grabbed Alby, the dogs and Scarecrow's hostages, they began their escape from the Underworld. As Sky Monster drove them out of the Underworld and worked to evade the Hydra and the minotaurs, Jack, knowing at some point the explosive in his neck would be detonated, told his allies to go on without him, proceeded to distract their enemies as Sky Monster and the others drove away. As it got dark, one of the Underworld's chase choppers located them, but the group was lucky enough to be rescued by the newly arrived Pooh Bear, Stretch and Mabel Merriweather. As the group asserted they'd need an army to storm the Underworld and free their friends, Alby realised he could get them one, and as Alby won the minotaurs to their side, Sky Monster repaired the chopper and flew himself, Pooh Bear and Stretch back to the Underworld. Arriving just as the ceremony to divert the Hydra galaxy was underway, Sky Monster fired at the camouflage netting covering the Underworld and brought down the relay antennae Alby had instructed him to destroy to keep Vacheron from detonating the explosive in Jack's neck. After covering the minotaurs as they assaulted the mountain, Sky Monster waited until Jack, Lily and the others had been found, before flying alongside the chopper Hades had secured for them back to the mine where the Sky Warrior was parked, and from there they proceeded on to the West farm to recover from the ordeal. The Three Secret Cities . Personality While he is far more comfortable fighting in the air than he is on the ground, Sky Monster is a reliable ally and a true friend to everyone in the Coalition of Minnows team. Skills * Expert Pilot: Having trained in the New Zealand Air Force, Sky Monster can pilot a variety of military aircraft, including fighter jets and helicopters. Sky Monster enjoys challenging his piloting skills by undertaking unusual maneuvers and landing on unconventional landing strips, and is able to adapt to any kind of odd aerial combat situation. Sky Monster is competent enough of a pilot to be able to teach Jack how to fly choppers. * Trained Marksman: Presumably as a necessity of serving in the New Zealand armed forces, Sky Monster is capable of using a variety of different firearms should the need arise. Equipment Weapons To Be Added... Vehicles * ''Halicarnassus'': A specially modified Boeing 747 plane which was once owned by Saddam Huissein until Jack stole it in order to escape from Basra, Jack has allowed Sky Monster to be its primary pilot and carer for the Coalition of Minnows team's use in their missions. When the Hali's forward landing gear was damaged by Carnivore, Jack managed to take off for one last flight to the final Vertex on Easter Island, and Sky Monster was disheartened knowing that there could be no safe landing for the Halicarnassus, saying it was just as much a member of the team. * ''Sky Warrior'': . Trivia *Sky Monster's actual name has not been revealed, and it is constantly joked that only his parents know what it is. *Sky Monster is also the only team member who did not get a new nickname from Lily. **Ironically, however, he is the one who gives Lily a nickname of her own; Eowyn. Category:Characters Category:Huntsman Characters Category:Main Characters Category:New Zealand Characters Category:Protagonists Category:Coalition of Minnows Members Category:Seven Ancient Wonders Category:The Six Sacred Stones Category:The Five Greatest Warriors Category:The Four Legendary Kingdoms Category:The Three Secret Cities